A/HRC/11/2 page 11 flexibility in terms of the minimum age. Thus, for States that are parties to the Arab Charter and to either or both of the other two international human rights treaties, the higher standard must prevail. In practice, this applies to all relevant States. 34. A second obstacle concerns disputes over the age of the individual. Contrary to previous reporting periods (for example, see A/HRC/4/20/Add.1, p. 154), none of the communications received from Governments during the reporting period disputed that the offenders sentenced to death were younger than 18 years at the time of the offence. In cases where a genuine dispute does exist, the Government is obligated to give the benefit of any doubt to the individual concerned. In other words, the inadequacy of birth registration arrangements cannot be invoked to the detriment of an individual who can reasonably contest an official claim that the age of majority had been attained at the time of the relevant offence. 35. A third obstacle, invoked especially by the State that is responsible for the great majority of the executions of juveniles, concerns the requirements of Islamic law. Thus, the main argument advanced by the Islamic Republic of Iran is that, where the death penalty is provided as retribution (Qesas) for murder, the “enforcement of Qesas depends upon the request to be made by guardians of the murder victim; and the Government is solely delegated to carry out the verdict, on behalf of the former” (A/HRC/8/3/Add.1, p. 223). The Government asserted that, as a consequence of this principle, it could not enforce the prohibition of the death penalty for juvenile offenders in cases where it is imposed as Qesas. On the same grounds, the Government argued that its authorities had no power to grant pardon or commutation of the death sentence in a Qesas case. It added that it strived “to apply mechanisms, such as the provision of financial assistance to the guardians, which might result in receiving the required consent [to the juvenile offender being pardoned] from them”. It is beyond the scope of my mandate to examine the validity of this argument in terms of Islamic law, but it is noteworthy that none of the other States in which Islamic law is applicable has seen the need to invoke this exception. 36. In terms of international law, however, it is clear, as I have indicated in response to the specific cases,15 that the obligation to eliminate capital punishment for offences committed by persons below 18 years of age cannot be confined to the role played by the judicial authorities, thus permitting the parallel existence of a whole separate regime designed to satisfy additional retribution claims asserted by the victim’s family. No such additional considerations are contemplated in either article 37 (a) of the Convention on the Rights of the Child or article 6 (5) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. To permit such a separate regime, and for the State to be able to assert that it has no power over that regime, would be to comprehensively undermine the system of international human rights law. This also helps to explain why such an exemption has not been invoked by other States in an effort to facilitate the continuation of the juvenile death penalty. 37. In some States, the juvenile death penalty can be abolished by judicial decision (as in the United States of America in March 2005)16 alone. In others, the actions required will be more 15 See for example the communications to the Islamic Republic of Iran and to Sudan in A/HRC/11/2/Add.1. 16 Roper v. Simmons, 543 U.S. 551 (2005).